Eisa Nefertari Ulen teaches English at
Hunter College in New York City, and her essays have been widely
anthologized. Nominated by Essence magazine for a National
Association of Black Journalists Award, she has contributed to
numerous other publications, including The Washington Post, Ms.,
Health, and CreativeNonfiction.org.
She is the recipient of a Frederick Douglass Creative Arts
Center Fellowship for Young African American Fiction Writers and
a Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship. Eisa graduated
from Sarah Lawrence College and earned a master's degree from
Columbia University. She lives with her husband in Brooklyn.
"With its languid pacing and rhythmic voice, Eisa
Nefertari Ulen's novel at times feels like an elongated
spoken-word poem....Ulen manages to pull it off with her
nuanced depictions of Black life and her obvious love for
her characters as they strive to create new realities out of
the heartbreaking events of the past."
�The Washington Post
"Ulen wisely takes her time revealing Crystelle's pain,
creating an authentic quality to her story. You feel for
Crystelle...even as you're urging her to move forward and
leave the past behind."
�Essence
"Eisa is a careful writer who strives to craft character,
scene, and ambiguity. Her voice has the beauty and economy
of poetry."
�Jeffery
Renard Allen, author of Rails Under My Back
"Affirms faith in the enduring power of young love.
Welcome Eisa Ulen."
�Elizabeth
Nunez, author of Prospero's Daughter and Bruised
Hibiscus
With her well-employed fianc” and a comfortable life in New
York City, Crystelle has a life most young professionals would
envy. She has come a long way from the rough Philadelphia
neighborhood where she grew up. But she hasn't left the past
behind her. A ghost from her West Philly days continues to haunt
her -- the spirit of her high school sweetheart Jimmie, who she
watched get gunned down one unforgettable night years ago.
Emotionally distraught from her unsettling memories and the
suspicion she may be pregnant, Crystelle goes back to her old
neighborhood to reconnect with friends and family. There, with
the help of Jimmie's mother, a woman who Crystelle loves like
family -- and who makes a prison visit to the young man who
murdered her son -- Crystelle can finally come to grips with her
past, realizing the power of forgiveness and the need to move
on.
A profound and intense story with deeply resonant depictions
of urban African American life, Crystelle Mourning is a
triumphant, lyrical beginning to a bright new talent in fiction.
Eisa is
anthologized in Step into a World with many other
talented writers
Step
into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature Click to order via
Amazon
Format:
Hardcover, 470pp.
ISBN: 0471380601
Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
Pub. Date: October 2000
From across the globe, here is a historic gathering of some
hundred of the greatest black writers of this era. Bringing
together emerging literary talent along with established and
award-winning writers like Booker Prize�winner Ben Okri,
Junot
D�az,
Edwidge Danticat,
Paul
Beatty, Joan Morgan, Sarah Jones, and Hilton Als, Step into
a World is a provocative anthology that offers a window into
crucial issues of post�Civil Rights and post colonial black
life.
Compiled by Kevin Powell (whom famed scholar
Michael Eric Dyson called "one of America's most brilliant
young cultural critics"), this extraordinary collection contains
a range of fiction, poetry, essays, and criticism�some never
before published�along with e-mails, letters, manifestos, and
the new genre of hip-hop journalism, here in book form for the
first time. Indeed, hip-hop music, culture, and politics
permeate Step into a World, as many of the writers have been
affected in some way by the biggest pop cultural phenomenon of
the past twenty-five years.
Hailing from the United States, the Caribbean, Canada, Europe,
and Africa, these luminary writers present poignant and powerful
thoughts on racial identity, gender oppression, homophobia,
classism, Tiger Woods, the black intelligentsia, Oprah's Book
Club, and the Beat Generation, as well as blunt assessments on
the crack epidemic, police brutality, postintegration America,
and the future state of Africa.
The first major collection of contemporary black writing in
nearly a decade, Step into a World includes writers born
as early as 1957 and as recently as 1977. The result is an
anthology full of energy and stylistic variations, and it is an
incredible journey into the richly textured world of the new
black literature
Crystelle
Mourning
Step
into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature